Thriller (aka Boris
Karloff's Thriller) is an hour-long TV horror
anthology series that originally aired on NBC from 1960 to 1962. At the
beginning of each Thriller hour, Hollywood's original master of the
macabre, Boris Karloff, sets the tone and primes
viewers for frightful and chilling dramas based on the works of some of the horror genre's
greatest writers: Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Cornell Woolrich,
Richard Matheson, and Robert Bloch, to name just a few. Shot in eerie black and white, each episode offers at least one
complete dramaa few episodes divide the hour between two or three shorter playsand many feature notable guest
stars such as William Shatner, Elizabeth Montgomery, Leslie Nielsen, John Carradine, Tom Poston, Edward Andrews, and even
host Boris Karloff himself.

During the years since its original run, the series has
garnered a huge base of fans, some of whom are
themselves big names in the entertainment industry or the horror subculture. For example, Lawrence Rapchak,
musical director for the Northbrook Symphony Orchestra in the Chicago area, says he loves Thriller because it
perfectly embodies "that spooky, exciting, 1950s Halloween-type zeitgeist that [he] experienced as a kid." Famed splatterpunk
author and genre historian David J. Schow is also enthusiastic about the show, citing certain episodes as the palpable
progeny of EC Comics and pointing out others that "resonate like a feature film." And even venerated horror-meister
Stephen King is a devotee. Indeed, in his popular nonfiction book on the horror genre, Danse Macabre, King goes so far
as to call Thriller "the best horror series ever put on TV."

Of course, like most anthology shows, Thriller has its share of
clunker episodes that elicit groans of displeasure from even its most ardent fans. And some horror aficionados, including
a few high-profile ones, are also put off by the handful of episodes that are crime-based
"thrillers" rather than stories of the ghastly or the macabre. Film historian and frequent Fangoria
contributor Tom Weaver, for example, has a reputation as a "Thriller killer"
because he openly reviles the series as "bottom-notch" horror, usually proffering the crime-based
episodes as his primary evidence. However, detractors like Weaver conveniently ignore the fact that the best episodes
of Thriller are often cited by both horror fans and entertainment pundits as some of the most memorably
terrifying hours of broadcast television. And in spite of the occasional naysayer, Thriller has stood the test of
time and can still give an audience chills, thrills, and goose bumps aplenty.